Teaching is Not a Crime: Challenging Virginia's Unconstitutional Regulation of Yoga Teacher Training

In Virginia, you can teach anyone anything—except how to earn an honest living.
http://www.ij.org/vayoga

Anyone in Virginia can do yoga, and anyone can teach yoga. But, incredibly, it is illegal to teach people to teach yoga. Yoga-teacher training is just the latest target of vocational school licensing laws that require countless entrepreneurs to ask the governments permission before opening their mouths.
Vocational-school licensing burdens both economic liberty and freedom of speech. The cost of compliance is typically thousands of dollars and over a week of full-time administrative work. For owners of small schools, these costs can make the difference between viability and closing down.

Vocational-school laws arent just bad policy—theyre unconstitutional. The First Amendment protects the right of individuals to decide for themselves what is worth saying and who is worth listening to. States cant require writers to get permission before publishing a book, nor can they force filmmakers to seek permission before making and selling a movie. Similarly, it is unconstitutional for state governments to demand that speakers ask the governments permission before lecturing to a room of willing listeners, regardless of whether the subject is how to do something useful.

This case seeks to vindicate the right of all Virginians to speak and earn an honest living. That is why, on December 1, 2009, yoga-teacher trainers Julia Kalish, Suzanne Leitner-Wise, and Beverly Brown teamed up with the Institute for Justice to challenge the constitutionality of Virginias vocational-school law as applied to yoga-teacher trainers.

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Category:

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[thephranc]

It's all about that money not safety just money. Disgusting government.

[Vinyls03]

This is a great cause worth fighting for. LRY and studios like it are in danger and as someone who has found so much joy and enlightenment in this practice, I would hate to seeing anyone deny people of that freedom. Please pass the word along and protect yoga in Virginia

[rattlesnakemilitia]

Too many restrictions and regulations and more over too many taxes and fees. Yoga being related to religion should not be taught in public school, unless it is a club or such you join voluntarily, eyes wide open, but other than that government should back off. Gov used to serve us and now we are forced to serve their insane ideas, rules and regulations. Are we becoming an oligarchy?

[slapcompany]

The process of leadership is to turn your values into a compelling cause for others.

How has your manager contributed to your success?

slapCompany

[allgoraro]

more certificates--more money for the state.

[singlaprety12]

Tell me why people have to pay so much to be able to make a honest living??

[CurtHowland]

@PrayingForDaylight You thought the US wasn't a socialist country?

Socialism is exactly what the "third way" means.

Well, ok, Fascism. Private ownership of title, but govt regulation of business and private life. Like property taxes, where you don't actually own anything, you just pay rent to the real owner.

[Superlibertytv]

Individual citizens owe no duty to the state, only corporations who are allowed to exist from the state. Look up Hale vs Hinckle US supreme court ruling 1906. We are not subject to the statutes and regulations of the state, our power to contract is unlimited. the confusion is that we think that going into business for yourself is the same as incorporating, and it is not, one is based on contract rights, the other on immunities from liability through the state.

[Freethought42]

"The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!"

Frederic Bastiat, "The Law"

[juggler100]

Who is John Galt?

[SouthPhillyHooligan]

You expressed an opinion deviating from the proper ideological line, Pileofgreyrocks, and although you expressed this opinion intelligently and politely, you must now be punished with multiple thumbs down votes from the lovers of liberty.

[SouthPhillyHooligan]

Exactly-- the courts have historically held that advertising and commercial transactions can be regulated. We are talking about commercial transactions for the purpose of learning a trade, not people sharing their hippie crunchy granola philosophy for free. This is not a First Amendment issue. Of course the dogmatic Ayn Rand worshippers at IJ probably also think the state issuing medical licenses is unconstitutional.